Habibur Rahman’s The River of Partition (Ichamati, 2023) documents this riverine environment, the diverse communities that live around it, and the socio-historical role played by the river in the wake of the partition of India in 1947 and the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.
Against the backdrop of Partition, independent India’s first hockey team defeats England, their erstwhile coloniser, to win the Gold at the 1948 London Olympics. Six decades later, when Nandy Singh, a member of this iconic team suffers a stroke, his tenacious struggle to recover, inspires his daughter to retrace his journey. Using archival footage and interviews with teammates, she reveals lives shaped by the Gold, and by Partition that made them refugees. Revealed also is a friend in Pakistan never spoken of before. Her journey in search of him morphs into a quest for the lost ‘watan’ (homeland).
Zed, a young British rapper, is about to start his first world tour, when a crippling illness strikes him down, forcing him to move back in with his family. He tries to find himself between an international music career and Pakistani family traditions.
Bano and her fiance face the trials and tribulations caused by the 1947 Indian partition.